What travelling 54,000 miles by train taught me about model railways

What travelling 54,000 miles by train has taught me about keeping my model railway in tip-top condition.
I’ve been running model railway engineer for almost two years now and almost 90% of the articles, tips and guides on model trains you read here are written when I’m on a normal commuter train.

I travel between Surrey and London daily, to Bristol numerous times a month and to Cornwall lots of times a year and all on public transport trains. That’s approximately 2,300 miles by train every month! And approximately 54,000 miles I’ve travelled by train while working on this blog!!

It’s a good job I love trains!

Apart from getting to know South West Trains and First Great Western very well this train travel has also taught me that, like our OO, N and HO gauge versions, big trains frequently don’t run smoothly: trains break down, tracks need fixing and lines get blocked. If only a giant finger could reach down out the sky and give the trains I’m on a gentle nudge when they get stuck!

Here’s what watching Network Rail, Network South East and First Great Western while travelling 14,000 has taught me about keeping trains running.

Track Maintenance

For all the abuse they get, Network Rail – the organisation managing track in the UK – spends a huge amount of time and resource on trying to keep the railways running. (If you’re interested, there’s a great infographic on how much they spend and on what to maintain the railway here).

And if you want your trains to run smoothly, you need to do the same on your layout, as I wrote in the post on keeping trains running smoothly and track cleaning tips.

Regularly check the electrical connections are in good order.

Maintain and clean your track – once a month

Check for debris on the lines

Service Your Trains

From the early days of railway transport, trains have needed regular maintenance and it’s no different for the latest FGW and SW train or your small-scale rolling stock.

Trains, big and small, break. Just two days ago on my journey from London to Guildford, a train broke down ahead of the one I was on and nothing moved for almost an hour.

For model trains, the very least you should do is apply model train oil to movable parts. Watch this video for a great overview of how to clean your trains.

Design for Errors

There’s hardly a week goes by when I don’t experience some kind of delay on my travels. While these are frustrating as hell they are understandable given how complex and busy UK rail networks are now. What it has taught me, however, is that problems whether caused by accident or mistakes, will happen and need to be expected.

On model railways, this means planning for failure. Make the electrics easy to follow so you troubleshoot lose connections, design the baseboard so you can all parts of the layout and provide access holes on tunnels and bridges in case of derailment etc.

Share your what you’ve learnt and how it relates to your model railway.

What mistakes have you made that could have been planned for?

Share your story in the comments, I’ll read it on my train journey today.

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